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| My Hawaiian man- with our nephew Kawai |
Living Aloha encompasses many things, but the baseline thought is to be good. Treat others how you want to be treated, do the right thing, have integrity, be responsible, and just love. Love your family, love your friends, love the earth, love yourself. I've been trying to become a better person lately. I think it's important to try to make ourselves into the best possible selves we can be for the betterment of humanity on the whole. If people just tried a little more, how much better off would we all be? If people cared more, how much better would our world be?
It's frustrating to me that human nature is what it is. People are greedy and lazy and selfish and it seems that that will never change. It's hard for me to want to be good and kind when it seems like nobody cares and they'll just take advantage of it. It makes me want to be greedy, lazy, and selfish, too. But I see how it's cyclical and I just keep hoping that if I stay true, maybe someday, things will change for the better. It's hard to stay optimistic in the face of such blatant disregard, though.
The other day I was at WalMart (I have an internal struggle with this, too). I parked far away (someone else might need a closer spot, I can walk!), brought my own reusable shopping totes, tried to make the cashier's day a little better, and when I unloaded my things into my car, I looked around for a cart corral in which to put my shopping cart. There wasn't one in my row, but there was one in the next row over, only 3 parking spots up, and there was a gap nearby that my cart would fit through. Score! So I proceeded to push my cart toward the corral. On the way there, I passed a girl of perhaps 17 years of age putting her bags into her car. Mind, she's between my car and the cart return, so she's much closer to it than I. I smiled at her, she stared blankly back. I shrugged and kept on, pushed my cart into the return, making sure it slid into the cart in front of it (don't you hate it when people put their carts in there sideways so nobody else can put their carts in?). I turned around and headed back to my car and saw the 17 year old getting in to her car. Her shopping cart was between her car and the one next to it (which is next to the cart corral). Really? I mean... really?!
How much work could it have POSSIBLY been for her to put her cart away? It was literally 10 feet away from her. And she has no excuse. She wasn't in a hurry; she sat in her car and put more lip gloss on before driving away. She's not disabled, we were more than 2/3 of the way down the row of cars. She couldn't possibly have been scared to return her cart, as it was broad daylight and I'm certainly not going to hurt her. Well, at that point I might have, but if she'd just taken 5 extra steps and pushed her cart into the corral, I probably would have smiled again!
I just don't get it. Now some poor, underpaid employee will have to work that much harder to return all those carts left abandoned in the middle of the row by lazy slobs like her. WTF, people. I could never do that job. I would get so angry every time I went out of my way to fetch a cart that was left willy-nilly when there was a cart corral nearby. I would probably have an anyeurism.
As I reread what I wrote, it seems to me that Living Aloha is kind of the opposite of being selfish. That makes sense, then, that I would try to hard to embrace it as a way of life, since I have such a personal conflict with selfishness. I want my son to grow up with good karma in mind, and the only way to ensure that is to make sure he sees me doing it. I guess I'll just keep working on it.
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| That's a clear conscience right there |
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